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Article

Of Love, Physics and Other Passions: The Letters of Albert and Mileva

AUG 01, 1994
In the letters between the young Einstein and his classmate Mileva Marić, prophetic musings on the electrodynamics of moving bodies vie with urgent professions of love.
Gerald Holton

The popular image of the scientist as “dispassionate,” and therefore somehow less than human, is undoubtedly bolstered by the convention according to which modern scientists remove discussion of their personal hopes and desires as much as possible from the publication of their research results. There is at least one good reason for the appearance of impersonality in the scientific literature: It minimizes obstacles against building consensus and thus hastens the conversion of private science into public science.

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References

  1. 1. J. Stachel, ed., The Collected Papers of Albert Einstein, vol. 1, Princeton U.P., Princeton, N.J. (1987).

  2. 2. A. Reiser, Albert Einstein, Albert & Charles Boni, New York (1930).

More about the authors

Gerald Holton, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts.

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This Content Appeared In
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Volume 47, Number 8

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